Professor, students give insight into a neighborhood’s assets with research project

Posted by Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities on July 22, 2025

When Indiana University South Bend Sociology Professor Gail McGuire was deciding on a research project, she put out the call to local neighborhood associations. The Monroe Park Neighborhood Association in South Bend jumped at the chance to dive deeper into identifying the strengths of their community.

“I had been reading about ways to map the assets of a neighborhood. We tend to focus on the negatives of a neighborhood. They wanted to see things they could build upon,” McGuire said.

The association has been around for a couple decades but had been focused on dealing with perceived negatives. Being able to identify what people saw as strengths appealed to them.

“We were excited for Gail to capture many of our unique qualities and attributes in one place and then be able to share the website with others both inside and outside of the neighborhood to build more awareness of what we are doing and a sense of identity,” said Jason Isch of the Monroe Park Neighborhood Association.

McGuire started building relationships in the neighborhood in the fall of 2023 and is now wrapping up the research. As she was compiling the data, she realized that if the association was going to be able to act upon her findings, it needed to be more than an academic report of data.

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